Microbial control agents project

• Project description
• The Bacillus thuringiensis toxin specificity database
• Toxin specificity database categories
• How to use the database
• Publications
• Toxin specificity data summaries

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How to use the database

You can search the database by toxin gene designation, pest species or author. For each search you need to access two main tables to get a complete dataset.

For example...

You want to know what has been published on insecticidal activity of the Cry1Aa toxin.

• Enter Cry01Aa* in the search box. Please note that you have to precede primary toxin ranks that are less than 10 with a 0. The wild card ensures that you retrieve entries for all quaternary ranks and not just bioassays for which the quaternary rank was not specified (which have been entered as Cry1Aa).
• Click on the Bioassay button and hit Search. This will produce a list of all published bioassays of all Cry1Aa toxins, sorted by toxin gene, insect genus and species. This provides details on how the bioassay were done (type, instar), the ED50 and its units and the response variable that was measured, and the principal author´s name. Clicking on the pest name provides a table with more taxonomic information (order family common name).
• Click on the Toxin gene button and hit Search. This will produce a list of details for the same data set, in particular how the toxin proteins were produced (expression host, and methods of inclusion body extraction, toxin solubilization, purification, activation and potein estimation. This same information can be retrieved when in the Bioassay table by clicking on the toxin gene designation for a particular bioassay.
• Use the Sort By feature to change the primary ranking parameter within each of the two tables. So if you want to look specifically at a subset of the data for a particular pest or pest genus, click on the `Genus, Species, Gene´ ranking order in the drop down menu.
• Use the Print feature in the upper right corner of the box to obtain a hard copy print out, which fits in Landscape on a 14" sheet.

Searches by pest can be done using either scientific or common names, or just the Genus name. When using the full scientific name, you have to use the word and between species and genus (Heliothis and virescens). You can also search by crop commodity, but only in as far as the crop name occurs in the common name of the insect.

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